Tuesday, June 14, 2016

How Iraq’s Fallujah Fell To The Islamic State

As the Iraqi
government is currently trying to free Fallujah it’s important to remember how
the city originally fell to insurgents. Fallujah joined the protests that
started in December 2012 against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. It quickly
became one of the more radical sites in the country highlighted by the
preponderance of Saddam era Iraq flags and banners of the Islamic State of Iraq
with different insurgent groups trying to exploit the demonstrations to turn
people towards violence. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki played right into their
hands when he shut down the Ramadi protest site. In response, armed men from a
mix of tribes and militant groups immediately took to the streets of Fallujah
and quickly seized power. That marked the return of Iraq’s insurgency.

The fall of Fallujah
can be traced back to the 2012 protest movement. In mid-December Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki made a move against Finance Minister Rafi Issawi by arresting some of his
bodyguards and accusing him of involvement in terrorism. That happened a year
after Maliki did the same against Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, running him
out of office and then the country. Spontaneous protests began in several
sections of the country against the government including in Fallujah. By the
end of the year up to 60,000 were reportedly demonstrating against Maliki in the city.
Confrontations quickly ensued in January 2013 when people threw rocks at the security forces resulting in them
shooting into the crowd killing 9 and wounding 60. (1) Later 2 soldiers were
killed in retaliation. Armed men took to the streets and it looked like a
greater explosion could occur, but calmer heads prevailed. There was another
clash in April after security forces killed protesters in Hawija, Kirkuk, which led
to shootings in Fallujah with one policeman killed. A few days later gunmen attacked a police checkpoint killing 2 more police and wound 2 others. There
were also calls in Fallujah to create an army to protect the protesters from the
security forces (ISF). This was all helping the Baathist Naqshibandi, Islamic
State and others that were hoping to turn the crowd towards violence. Maliki
was ready to oblige them.

By the end of 2013
Fallujah was ready to explode and the prime minister lit the match with two moves.
First, the government arrested Parliamentarian Ahmed Alwani who was a leader at the Ramadi protest
site, and in the process got into a shootout with his guards that led to the
death of his brother and others. In Fallujah, a sheikh gave a speech saying the Alwani incident meant war and
called on people to take up arms. Just before that, a major military campaign
was launched to try to clear out militants from the rural and border areas of
western Anbar. During that exercise the entire leadership of the 7th
Division was killed in a booby-trapped house outside of Rutba. On December 30, Maliki used
that as an excuse to shut down the Ramadi protest area claiming that it was under the control of the Islamic State, which was not
true. That immediately led to fighting in that city and Fallujah as well. By January 1 gunmen took the police headquarters and the mayor’s office and blew them up. That led the Counter Terrorism Forces to be sent in, but they were stopped. The
Islamic State grabbed the headlines in the fighting, but in fact military council had been formed made up of local tribes, the Islamic State, the Islamic Army, Hamas
al-Iraq, the Mujahadeen Army, ex-Baathists, and others. This was exactly what
the militants wanted. They wanted to show people in Fallujah and other Sunni
areas that peaceful protests would get them nothing, because the government
would not only ignore them, but also use force against them. They offered the
alternative of taking up the gun as the only way to assert their rights. Maliki
was only too happy to help by attacking the Hawija site, and then taking
advantage of the 7th Division tragedy to shut down the Ramadi
protests igniting open fighting in Anbar.

The response to the
Fallujah take over was haphazard and chaotic, and only let the militants solidify
their control over the city. At first, Baghdad called on local leaders to restore security. Various efforts were made to
open up dialogue with those running Fallujah to try to negotiate the fighters’
departure, but all of those failed. At the same time the army began surrounding Fallujah, and shelling it. By the end of January, the first of many operations was launched try to expel the insurgents, but that didn’t work either.
What ended up happening was that the militants were able to hareden their hold
on the city, while the security forces increasingly turned to a loose cordon
around Fallujah firing mortars, artillery, rockets, and dropping barrel bombs
on it. By the middle of March 2014, the Fallujah hospital claimed that 870 people had been killed and wounded from the indiscriminate
shelling of the city. That practice continues to the present day.

The final act in the
Fallujah uprising was the ascendency of the Islamic State over all of the other
armed factions. After the city fell more and more insurgents moved in, and IS
was just one of many. As it did in the past however, the Islamic State never
believed it was one amongst equals. Instead, it believed that it should be in
control with all the others giving it allegiance or being eliminated if they
didn’t. By March there were the first stories that IS was attempting to assert itself,
and by the end of the summer they appeared to be fully in charge with news that
other groups were leaving the city because they refused to be under their leadership. It was
like the Islamic State had pulled off a coup after the revolution. All these
different groups from local sheikhs to national militant groups had come
together to expel the government from Fallujah. They far outnumbered IS, but it
was still able to maneuver itself into co-opting or expelling all the others
due to its organization, ruthlessness, and use of force.

This conflagration
of events was what led to the fall of Fallujah. What started as peaceful
protests against Maliki’s political persecution was quickly radicalized, and
then exploited by different insurgent groups who wanted things to move towards
violence. The premier thought he could put down the demonstrations, but that
backfired and the militants who had been waiting for that moment restarted open
fighting in the country in Fallujah. The incoherent response to that let the
different armed groups solidify their control of the town, while the Islamic
State was planning all along to seize the opportunity to become the paramount
and sole group. Things quickly degenerated to a siege of the city, which was
never effective as the outlets from Fallujah were never secured, and thousands
of civilians ended up being killed and wounded by the indiscriminate shelling
by the Iraqi forces. Even when the Hashd unilaterally decided to assault the
city in the summer of 2015, it quickly ground to a halt and reverted back to
lobbying shells into the urban area. It took 28 months for the government to
finally launch an organized assault to retake the city. Fallujah will
eventually fall, but the lesson is events did not have to play out the way it
did. A series of political mistakes and hubris were what led to Fallujah being
seized. Maliki was a master politician able to play divide and conquer with his
opponents, but that eventually led to such anger within sectors of the Sunni
population that it allowed the insurgency to make a comeback.

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About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the politics, economics, security, culture and history of Iraq via original articles and interviews. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com